Chapter Ten – His Ghosts, Her Chain
672 Words
The night was unusually quiet.
Outside the mansion, Rome slept under a blanket of rain, droplets trailing down the windows like silent tears. Inside, everything was still—except for the flicker of candlelight seeping under the door of Lorenzo’s private quarters. A place even the bravest guards avoided.
But she was already inside.
Alessia sat near the fire, wrapped in a cashmere throw too big for her frame, the warmth barely reaching the cold knot in her stomach. The scent of expensive cigars lingered in the air—masculine, sharp, and unforgiving.
He hadn’t spoken since they returned. Not after the blood. Not after the marble. Not after she saw a man take his last breath for defying him.
Lorenzo stood by the tall bookshelf, glass of scotch in hand, staring at nothing. His jaw clenched. The firelight made the sharp lines of his face look almost tragic. As if somewhere under the cruelty… was a boy who once begged the world to be kind.
But the world hadn’t listened.
She shifted on the chair. “Why did you bring me here?”
Stillness.
“You could’ve let me rot in that bedroom like the spoiled prisoner I am. But you brought me here.”
His head turned slowly, eyes dark and unreadable. “You keep calling yourself a prisoner. Yet I keep finding you close to my flame.”
Her fingers tightened around the edge of the throw. “Maybe I want to know what burns you.”
The room went silent again.
He placed his glass down with a soft clink, then stepped forward, unbuttoning his sleeves. The ink on his arms moved with each muscle—a tapestry of violence and loss. But it was the scar near his collarbone that caught her attention. Small. Jagged. Almost deliberate.
“Who gave you that?” she asked softly.
He didn’t answer. Instead, he crossed to a chest tucked beneath a painting—an old portrait of a woman with sad eyes. He opened it and pulled out a silver chain.
It shimmered under the firelight, delicate and thin—nothing like him.
He walked over and placed it in her palm. Cold. Beautiful. Heavy.
“Who was she?” Alessia whispered.
He didn’t speak for a long time. Then finally, he said, “She was my sister. The only one who knew me before the blood, before the Bratva. She wore that every day. The night she died… I picked it up from her body.”
Alessia’s throat tightened. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be,” he said too quickly. “Grief makes you weak. I buried it with her.”
She closed her fingers around the chain. “Then why are you giving it to me?”
Lorenzo stepped closer—closer than he ever had before.
His eyes locked onto hers. “Because when I saw you almost take a bullet for that boy… I realized something terrifying.”
“What?”
“That you don’t fear death. And that makes you dangerous… especially to me.”
Her breath caught.
“I’m not dangerous,” she said, voice barely audible.
“You are,” he whispered. “Because if I let myself feel anything for you… if I start remembering what it means to be human… they’ll use you against me. Just like they did with her.”
He turned away sharply, as if ashamed of the c***k in his armor.
Alessia rose, slow and quiet. Then placed the chain around her neck, letting it rest against her heartbeat.
“Then don’t feel anything for me,” she said. “Just let me carry her ghost. I’ll wear it for the both of us.”
He didn’t reply.
But when she moved past him to leave, his hand caught her wrist—gently.
And for the first time… he didn’t stop her from looking into his eyes.
He let her see it all.
The pain.
The ghosts.
The chain that never truly left his soul..
- Writer
